I was recently reading Simon Innes-Robbin's Dirty Wars: a Century of counter-insurgency and although the book doesn't directly deal with politics of decolonization he mentions that the Suez crisis did have an affect on political-military attitudes etc to some of France/Britain's colonies (e.g. Cyprus).
I just wondered to what extent the French-British defeat at Suez directly/indirectly affected colonial policies and attitudes to decolonization e.g. was it largely business as usual or did it cause a reappraisal of decolonization and its pace etc?
Thanks for reading
The Suez crisis greatly had an impact on decolonization.
So after the French and British started withdrawing and Danish soldiers took their places under the UN. The situation in the word became VERY clear to all parties. That is the age of imperialism is over.
The British and French for centuries had exerted themselves militarily to enforce their will on countries and their colonies. But a post WW2 world was not for imperialist. The US and USSR were both anti imperialist super powers and the UK and France found out right during the size crisis. Let’s focus on the USSR first
During the crisis. The USSR had been working out deals with the Egyptians and when the UK and France went in, it threatened to break all of that. Meaning that all of the weapons and equipment given to Egypt would be lost. Not only that but they were pissed about this form of aggressive colonialism returning. The USSR then threatened to nuke the UK and France. Oof
You’d think the US would support the UK and France. But the US was not consulted by their allies and this pissed them off. They were never told about any of this going on and Eisenhower was so mad that he threatened to kick the UK and France out of NATO ( which Russia was still talking about nuking so double oof ) and then threatened to crash the British economy which at this time was heavily dependent on the US.
With both super powers who were enemies united against you, it didn’t leave a lot of choices and it became clear that decolonization was going to happen one way or another. Both the UK and France saw the writing on the wall.
Not only that. But Egypt was being hailed by the Arab world as a model country for sticking up to the imperialist and it became clear to the UK and France that many other nations would want to follow in their resistance to colonialism. Both realized they were going to lose their empires ( one exception in France and Vietnam who the US was totally fine letting fight and try to keep. The UK and US wanted France to be strong for a war with Russia as France would be in the frontline against the USSR )
So a combination of the US and USSR both exerting their influence on the UK and France and their territories combined with a general sentiment of decolonization around the world really confirmed to the world that the British and French empires were done. All of this brought upon by the Suez crisis.